"We can't just leave guys with their heads fuckin' cut off lyin' around up here," Carlos said with a frown. He was at the desk in his office, wearing only his robe, a gold chain, and the phone that he'd had to keep glued to his ear for an annoyingly long time. He spoke in Spanish. The only thing that kept him from being entirely irate about it was the naked maid, who straddled him in his office chair in a slow, steady grind.
She kept her eyes closed and stayed quiet. Carlos didn't mind where she looked, but the silence was absolutely necessary. It wouldn't be good for the family to know he was fucking around during his conference calls.
"No, I'm sayin' that it brings down more heat than it's worth. We can't just be all flashy like that and then go out for drinks like nothing happened. This isn't Juarez." He listened, sighed, then thought for a moment. The maid kept grinding. Finally, he figured out a compromise. "Look, I'm not sayin' I won't do it. I just need to clean it up when it's done. I'll cut the fucker's head off myself, that's fine. I'm just gonna do it where I can keep the body. Yeah. Yeah, I'll just bring in his fucking friends or family or whatever and do it in front of them and then let them go tell everyone else. Them sayin' it in private is better than the whole thing going in the papers. Because once we escalate like that, we're going to have to stay at that level, and that's a lot of work and I'll need a lot more guys."
He shifted a bit for the maid, who was now leaning back onto the corner of the desk on her elbows. It gave him a nice view of her tits. This was his fourth or fifth time having her. Lydia had done a good job in hiring this one.
For the millionth time he thought about how good it was to have a wife who understood him. What good was being a drug kingpin if you couldn't live like it?
Not that the other guys on the conference call understood that. They all had wives, too, but their wives just nagged them. They all had to cover up their side-action. Carlos, by contrast, had a wife who would help him get more, and would help him cover it up from others. Not all the time, of course, and sometimes he was careless – otherwise he wouldn't be up here in Rain City right now – but Lydia was really his best asset. At least she understood the lifestyle, and stayed turned on by it after they got married rather than turning into a cranky old bitch like everyone else's wives did.
"No, I'm not going soft, cocksucker. I've done this shit before, remember? I'm the one who did the cop outside of Tijuana. You're the one who puked over it. Don't even fuckin' start that shit with me."
He favored whatshername with a bit of a smile. She was good at this, and Carlos appreciated it. This was too god damn early in the morning to deal with these guys without something to wake him up. It was like these guys had no idea of what time zone he was in. The sun was hardly even up yet. His eyes were bloodshot. He'd barely gotten out of bed in time for this.
He'd been tired lately. For a while now, actually. Lydia had a habit of keeping him up all night, as she had for the last two. He couldn't complain, but there it was. No real sleep for two days. About the only thing that could keep him awake was pussy. That was something else Lydia understood.
Come to think of it, Lydia probably sent the maid in here herself.
"Hey, that whole rumor about the Russians being up here already was for real, alright?" Carlos scowled. "It's for real, and those assholes are for real. I don't want them getting serious until we're ready for it, so if I gotta deal with all the chickenshit stuff first I'd like to do it quietly is all. Yeah. Yeah. That's it for me right now. I'm done."
Carlos waited a moment, then put the phone on speaker and muted it. "Now you can make noise," he said in English, and she did.
On the speakerphone, Pedro started talking about Los Angeles. Carlos would've been there, had it not been for the whole thing with Pedro's wife at Carlos and Lydia's wedding. That was half Lydia's doing, too. Probably more than half. But Pedro found out while they were on their honeymoon, and it was lucky that there wasn't blood over the whole thing. Instead, Pedro got a promotion (and a divorce), and Carlos was banished to the great wet north.
That was fine, Carlos figured. Nobody here would get in his way, anyway, and he wouldn't have to deal with his punk brother trying to kill him up here. Nobody else in the family was here making eyes at Lydia, either. Like she'd ever cheat on him. She flirted, sure, but she'd never cheat. Carlos was sure of that. She belonged to him.
"God, you're so big," the maid moaned.
"He is, isn't he?" came Lydia's voice. Carlos looked up, feeling not the least bit of shame about what he was doing as she entered. It wasn't embarrassment that left him quickly forgetting the maid, though, so much as lust. Lydia was all made up and dressed in leather and lace: stockings, garters, lacy bra, gloves, the whole bit. Everything except panties.
"There a special occasion here?" he asked with a grin. Beside the maid, the conversation over his phone's speaker continued. He was hardly listening anymore. Someone may have said his name, or perhaps not. He had forgotten about it completely.
"You left the bed and I couldn't stop thinking about how much more I wanted. I know how hard you work. I wanted to today to be special. You don't have anything else you need to do today, do you?" she asked. Her falsely innocent doe eyes contrasted sexily with the absolute sin offered by the rest of her body.
He had a lot to do, and it was important, but he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was. He didn't really bother to try, either. Carlos pulled away from the maid without so much as a look her way. Lydia held out her arms to him, engaging him in a hot, biting kiss as he seized her. Her arms tore away his open bathrobe before she pulled herself up against his shoulders as his own hands seized her ass. Carlos was inside her then, pinning her to the wall next to the door.
"Take me to bed and fuck me, baby," Lydia hissed.
Carlos didn't need to be asked twice. He carried her, mounted on his cock, down the hall to their master bedroom. Luckily the door was slightly ajar; maybe that had been planned by Lydia, too. She was good at planning things.
Inside, the room was lit up by dozens of candles. It had a slightly odd smell to it; there was a lot of incense, but it was as if that was just there to cover up something unpleasant. The curtains were drawn, the room was almost uncomfortably warm, and everything else was deathly quiet. Carlos stepped in something very wet in the carpet. He'd have looked down to see what it was, but Lydia grabbed his chin and forced another long, hungry kiss upon him.
"Take me, Carlos," she growled. "Fuck me."
Carlos brought her down onto the bed and obeyed.
Lydia grinned as he went at her. He missed the bloody pentagram in the carpet around the bed completely. She'd have him reduced to an animalistic, rutting frenzy before the bodies of Chuy and Paco under the bed began to stink.
Normally, bringing her prey to his end wasn't such a production. It wasn't as if she needed a complicated ritual to kill a man. This one, however, was needed for something beyond just killing.
His soul was bound for Hell, but his body had one last use.
************
"We look like assholes," Molly grumbled.
"I think you look cute," Onyx replied quietly.
Molly turned to Onyx with a scowl. "I want to put my fucking bra back on," she said icily.
Onyx glanced at her and couldn't help but snort at Molly's plaid beret and non-prescription black- rimmed glasses. The pink iZod shirt collar popped up under her dress jacket only made it worse.
She tried to control her laughter, but couldn't. The pair sat on a bench at North Seattle Community College, dutifully watching a single classroom's exits. Onyx was herself clad in an old white Smurfs shirt with blue sleeves that came down to just below the elbow, a scarf and, like Molly, skinny, high-waisted jeans.
"I don't think we're being nearly ironic enough to be good hipsters," Onyx observed finally.
"What are you talking about? We're trying to blend into our surroundings by dressing like people who try desperately to stand out by showing how much they don't care about conformity. We look like perfect assholes. I think we're fine there. How's that not ironic?" She wasn't as amused by the situation as Onyx. "Just had to spend enough money doing it. Alex better be ready to reimburse us for rescuing his ass."
Onyx bit down on her lips, but then decided to let her response fly anyway. "I plan on getting paid in sex."
Molly scowled again. She stared for a moment. "How awkward would it be for you if I watched?"
Her partner's eyes went wide, and her smile faded. "Um," she mumbled, unsure how serious Molly was about that.
"Molly? Is that you?" asked a nasally, technically male voice. A guy in a sweater vest and skinny slacks, with black-rimmed glasses identical to Molly's, approached the pair with his courier bag slung over his shoulder. "Oh my gooooosh, you two look great!"
"Go away, Sam," Molly said without looking at him.
"Seriously, oh my gosh! I've got to take your picture!" he said, fishing in his courier bag for his iPhone. "Do it and I will fucking murder you in your sleep," Molly snapped. Sam's eyes went wide. He took a step back, then another, and finally muttered an ironically nonchalant apology as he shuffled away.
"I take it back," Molly said. "I'm gonna make you watch."